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Dassault Systemes And i2 Form Strategic Partnership For Tying PLM And Supply Chain Management Together

Dassault Systemes and i2 Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of demand-driven supply chain solutions, announced their intent to form a strategic partnership to jointly develop sourcing solutions based on Dassault Systemes' V5 platform for the CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA applications.

The intent of the partnership is to integrate sourcing throughout the product lifecycle, thus eliminating barriers between the engineering and sourcing communities and providing both sides with the opportunity to more effectively drive innovation and create value.

"We believe this partnership will define a new, collaborative way to integrate sourcing into product innovation and PLM," said Bernard Charles, president and CEO, Dassault Systemes. "By partnering with a visionary in supply chain management, Dassault Systemes intends to define the convergence of the PLM and SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) spaces to support our networked global customers."

"We believe this is a great opportunity for i2 to continue to enhance and grow our expertise in supplier relationship management with a world-class PLM company such as Dassault Systemes," said Michael McGrath, i2 chief executive officer. "We believe this partnership can provide our customer base with an enhanced roadmap and growth path for the future."

The joint offering will be designed to offer cross-functional visibility and unmatched collaboration, bringing sourcing considerations to the engineer's desktop, and engineering criteria and 3D digital mockup to the sourcing specialist. The solutions will provide benefits such as:

Ability to design for supply. Engineers will be able to optimize design by taking into account part-sourcing information such as obsolescence, availability and companies' sourcing preferences early in the design cycle.

Enhanced re-use management. Companies will be able to manage a cross-functional enterprise catalog, fully immersed in the 3D design environment, by combining engineering and sourcing information. This will give engineers the ability to evaluate and compare components based on functional engineering specifications as well as on cost, vendor preference, lead times, geographic regulations, and other sourcing characteristics.

Optimized component and subsystem lifecycle management. Companies will lower product support risks because they will be able to evaluate all risks (technical, vendor, availability) before committing to final changes.

Converging engineering and sourcing processes. All criteria can be considered in advance, meaning fewer iterations between sourcing and engineering, less rework, and better collaboration. Sourcing analysts will be able to visualize, manipulate, test and simulate components before buying.

"Truly integrated PLM and sourcing solutions drive better collaboration between engineering and sourcing, leading to higher part re-use and more consistent part usage," said Leni Kaufman, vice president and CIO, Northrop Grumman Information Technology/Internal Information Services. "This is something that should be interesting to any company that designs and manufactures products."

"Enterprises aligning sourcing and engineering earlier in the product development cycle have reported 18% reductions in product costs, 10% to 20% improvements in time-to-market cycles, and more than 20% improvements in initial product quality," said Tim Minahan, senior vice president of Supply Research for Aberdeen Group. "Combining the strengths of i2's sourcing and Dassault Systemes' collaborative engineering capabilities should deliver a compelling platform to optimize product costs and accelerate innovation capture and new product introduction cycles."

The next-generation sourcing solutions will be developed in a dedicated competency center hosted in a new i2 subsidiary. This joint competency center will bring together i2's domain expertise and core SRM components along with Dassault Systemes' V5 platform and PLM expertise. As a part of the long-term partnership, i2 will convey control of the competency center to Dassault Systemes for approximately $10 million once certain conditions are met. i2 will then continue to provide SRM component upgrades and sourcing expertise and will work jointly with Dassault Systemes to define the scope of the project. i2 will also continue to market and sell its SRM solutions and support its customers.

i2 is probably one of the most significant companies you never heard of. This is also a bigger deal than might be realized at first glance because i2 is a leading provider of demand-driven supply chain products and services designed to enable what the company calls "business agility." i2 can synchronize demand and supply across a global supply network. Nineteen of the AMR Research Top 25 Global Supply Chains belong to companies who are i2 customers. Seven of the Fortune global top 10 are also customers of i2.

i2 was founded in 1988 by Sanjiv Sidhu and Ken Sharma, two visionaries in what was later coined "supply chain management" or SCM. Their goal was to apply technology and best practices for eliminating business inefficiencies related to the supply chain.

This supply chain optimization company, employs a unique process methodology to help companies deal with the variability that comes when managing supply and demand. This methodology combines integrated planning and execution that lets customers integrate disparate planning systems with workflow management systems to optimize their businesses performance in real time. The products are deliberately designed to meet customers' business needs around the company's core philosophy based on what it calls the "five optimizations" - Revenue and Profit Optimization, Spend Optimization, Production Optimization, Fulfillment Optimization and Logistics Optimization.

This strategic partnership between Dassault and i2 for jointly developing sourcing solutions based on Dassault Systemes' V5 platform for the CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA applications is part of the Component Application Architecture (CAA V5), Dassault Systemes' open middleware and development environment for PLM. This is a big deal for both companies as well as the customer bases and industries they both serve.

The Week's Top 5

At MCADCafé we track many things, including the stories that have attracted the most interest from our subscribers. Below are the five news items that were the most viewed during last week.

Supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc. announced the appointment of high-performance computing (HPC) industry veteran Dr. Margaret (Peg) Williams as senior VP responsible for engineering. In her new role, Williams will lead the company's software and hardware engineering efforts for the Cray X1E, XT3, and XD1 supercomputers, as well as Cray's research and development projects, including those known as Cascade and Rainier.

Telelogic, a provider of solutions for advanced systems and software development, and MatrixOne, Inc., a provider of collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions for the value chain, announced the commercial availability of a Customer Needs Management solution that integrates Telelogic DOORS, for requirements management, with MatrixOne Product Central, for managing a portfolio of products, features, and configurations throughout the product lifecycle.

Roland Advanced Solutions Division (ASD) has introduced a new plug-in that lets Rhino users setup and run Roland 3D laser scanners with Rhinoceros surface modeling software. Rhino 3.0 software can create, edit, analyze and translate NURBS curves, surfaces and solids. There are no limits to model complexity, degree, or size, and Rhino also supports polygon meshes and point clouds.

The leaders of the Rapid Prototyping (RP) industry announced free medical support for victims in Iraq at the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing conference in Dearborn US. "RP for Baghdad" is a humanitarian joint effort of Fried Vancraen (Materialise), Abe Reichental (3D Systems), Scott Crump (Stratasys), and Tom Clay (Z-Corporation) to provide medical models for victims in Iraq. The effort will focus on the most severely injured victims with serious head injuries or missing limbs. While helping people in serious need, the RP industry will demonstrate how its technology can fundamentally influence people's lives for the better. Even in

the difficult environment of war, 3D printed models based on medical image data are important tools to support surgeons in the most complex craniofacial reconstruction surgeries.